Texturing behavior in sintered reaction-bonded silicon nitride via strong magnetic field alignment

An attempt has been made to study the texture behavior in sintered reaction-bonded silicon nitride by strong magnetic field alignment, using slip casting of Si-powder without and with β-Si3N4 particle addition. It is shown that the a, b-axis aligned texture, parallel to the magnetic field, develop in the resultant SRBSN with β-seed addition, whereas no texture develops in those SRBSN without β-seed addition. The degree of orientation of β-Si3N4 is found to decrease with the formation of new β-phase during the nitridation, regardless of the nitriding conditions, suggesting that the initially oriented β-seed dose not promote the formation of newly oriented β-Si3N4. Compared to the nitridation, the degree of texture is enhanced by the post-sintering, but the nitridation condition has little effect on the texture development during the post-sintering. The present work implies that the texture development in SRBSN is governed by the initial orientation of β-Si3N4 seed and the post-sintering.